will amd be making a comeback?

[Denamian]

You mean like this?
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/har...re-i7-Nehalem-/0,139023402,339293122-3,00.htm

I can't believe that nobody has pointed this out yet... so I'm going to go ahead.

That chart is comparing the i7 (Intel's current/new gen) to the 9950 (NOT EVEN B.E.!!) which is AMD's last-gen.

Next time, please link a chart that is at least graphing two parts put out in the same generation (Nehalem vs Deneb).

I mean, the Deneb is on a different manufacturing process (45-deneb versus 65-phenom). Different socket (AM3-deneb AM2+with phenom). Etc.

 

[risqu3]

True, but times are a bit different this go around.

The economy actually favors Intel. They have the dollars (7 billion to be exact) to push into additional fabs and R&D. They are considerably less leveraged than AMD, and have a new product line that directly threatens AMDs largest profit center(enterprise market). Not to mention, Intel doesn't have an ATI type of burden either.

Now, I understand that some of these could easily be looked @ by an optimist as AMD advantages, and granted, they might turn out to be. However, I'm going lean on recent history, and say that AMD is going to have a really tough time getting out of this hole.

i dont think ATi is a burden, after all, it was because of ATi that intels x38/48 motherboards sold so well against nvidias, if ati was a liability atm, intel wouldn't have continued to support crossfire on their motherboards.

 

[Acer_Sheep]

Actually, it doesn't. Just because AMD isn't active in all segments doesn't mean that Intel isn't.
Intel outsells AMD in all segments, and Intel also has higher profit margins than AMD on every product.
If what you said were true, AMD would have the biggest marketshare.

I meant it only in processor division, for example Intel also developes chipsets and mainboards and AMD is making chipsets and graphics cards, if we take ATi as division of AMD.

 

[Scali2]

i dont think ATi is a burden, after all, it was because of ATi that intels x38/48 motherboards sold so well against nvidias, if ati was a liability atm, intel wouldn't have continued to support crossfire on their motherboards.

He means that ATi is a burden to AMD. Namely, the acquisition of ATi nearly killed AMD altogether, and the ATi branch wasn't exactly profitable at the time.

 

[Scali2]

I meant it only in processor division, for example Intel also developes chipsets and mainboards and AMD is making chipsets and graphics cards, if we take ATi as division of AMD.

Still doesn't make sense to me.

 

[facebook]

That article was just the first link that came up when I googled. I wanted to know what facebook is on about.
I have 0 interest in servers and 0 interest in VMs to be perfectly honest with you.

I know that.
I have read that vmware will update their software to support Intel newest features 2010, as for now Phenom/Opteron is the better choice.

 

[Zero82z]

I know that.
I have read that vmware will update their software to support Intel newest features 2010, as for now Phenom/Opteron is the better choice.

You read it where? Prove what you're saying, or cut the crap. I have never seen you post a single substantiated claim, and every time I refute what you say you just disappear without saying a word.

So far, Scali2 has posted benchmarks showing that i7 is faster than Phenom while running VMWare, whereas you've provided absolutely no evidence to the contrary. So if you've got some proof of what you're saying, I'd love to see it.

 

[facebook]

So far, Scali2 has posted benchmarks showing that i7 is faster than Phenom while running VMWare

You mean that i7 runs cinebench faster on vmware compared to Phenom 9950?

Try i7 and Phenom 940 and se for yourself

 

[Zero82z]

You mean that i7 runs cinebench faster on vmware compared to Phenom 9950?

That's as good of a metric as we have, since you haven't posted anything better.

Try i7 and Phenom 940 and se for yourself

I've used Phenoms with VMWare compared to my Q9550 and my system was significantly faster. An i7 would undoubtedly be much faster than my own PC, so it's quite obvious that an i7 will be faster than a Phenom II as well. Again, unless you have any evidence to the contrary, GTFO.

 

[brucedeluxe169]

ok name a microprocessor manufacture that can compete with intel on the desktop market?

via's a joke.. IBM doesnt make hardware anymore.. so name one that could compete with intel..

sure a company looks to control the market in hope that they have no competition.. but at the same time no competition also stops the growth in the market.. if theres nothing for intel to compete with.. whats the point in coming out with faster hardware.. if AMD fell.. they could stick with the i7 forever and not care about coming out with something newer, faster, using less power..

and if AMD was to fall.. sure they could hike up prices on hardware but then at the same time the companies making the transistors and material to create the cpu's could raise the cost.. so in the end intel would probably just break even with what they make per cpu now.. with out AMD there would be no competition through out the entire market.. and would take a lot of companies down with it..

a good example would be if the 3 major automakers in the US were to completely fail.. sure theres still companies in japan and europe.. but the 3 major automakers here in the US make up a huge part of the market(steel, aluminum, glass, rubber, copper, light bulbs(material used to make them)).. theres a lot more to it then people want to think about.. they just look at AMD and Intel and dont bother to count in all the companies they use and supply them to make their microprocessors..

there are other potential players in the desktop market, the big one being IBM with their Power PC chips, the other being Via... which isn't a "joke" .....

your claims about Intel sticking with old tech and hiking prices are completely unsubstantiated.... it would *not* be in Intel's best interests to do so, because *there are other microprocessor makers out there*, and stalling the development/hiking up the prices on their technology (x86) would only push consumers away from them.

especially in today's world of "good enough computing", a psycho Intel with slow technology/high prices would be easy pickings for the other companies looking to muscle in on Intel's desktop territory..... for 99% of desktop users, VIA/IBM/ARM chip/etc manufacturer CPUs are good enough for what they do.... intel would be crazy to give those guys an opening like that....

edit: and to reiterate (even though it does NOT apply to intel) .... being a monopoly is NOT illegal people... so get that stupidity out of your heads...

 

[Atl530i]

i dont think ATi is a burden, after all, it was because of ATi that intels x38/48 motherboards sold so well against nvidias, if ati was a liability atm, intel wouldn't have continued to support crossfire on their motherboards.

Kind of funny how the competitors products (ATI) helped Intel in the sales of X38/X48 motherboards.... I think ATI has actually helped AMD out a lot.

I am hoping for AMD to not go away. I still have my old Athlon t-bird 1333 alive and kicken... My next build will be based on an AMD CPU.

 

[Scali2]

You mean that i7 runs cinebench faster on vmware compared to Phenom 9950?

Try i7 and Phenom 940 and se for yourself

Benchmarks have shown little differences in clock-for-clock performance between Phenom and Phenom II. Also, there are no extra features in the Phenom II, let alone any new virtualization technology. So there is no reason to assume that Phenom II would do any better in a virtualization benchmark than Phenom.

 

[Flyboat]

there are other potential players in the desktop market, the big one being IBM with their Power PC chips, the other being Via... which isn't a "joke" .....

your claims about Intel sticking with old tech and hiking prices are completely unsubstantiated.... it would *not* be in Intel's best interests to do so, because *there are other microprocessor makers out there*, and stalling the development/hiking up the prices on their technology (x86) would only push consumers away from them.

especially in today's world of "good enough computing", a psycho Intel with slow technology/high prices would be easy pickings for the other companies looking to muscle in on Intel's desktop territory..... for 99% of desktop users, VIA/IBM/ARM chip/etc manufacturer CPUs are good enough for what they do.... intel would be crazy to give those guys an opening like that....

edit: and to reiterate (even though it does NOT apply to intel) .... being a monopoly is NOT illegal people... so get that stupidity out of your heads...

I don't believe it is in IBM's best interest to compete with Intel in desktop market. VIA doesn't have technical or financial resource to compete. Texas Instrument? How?

They are for profit organizations. They are not going to compete with Intel for sake of consumers.

 

[AltTabbins]

I really want to say that they will be top dog again but I think they are happy with their niche of being the best value for the money. Im very happy that they did something with ATI though.

 

[Silent.Sin]

Benchmarks have shown little differences in clock-for-clock performance between Phenom and Phenom II. Also, there are no extra features in the Phenom II, let alone any new virtualization technology. So there is no reason to assume that Phenom II would do any better in a virtualization benchmark than Phenom.

Well that's simply not true and a pretty haneous generalization. I guess it depends on your definition of a "feature", but the improvements for PhII include: DDR2/DDR3 dual memory controller, increased L3 cache size, decreased L3 cache latency, decreased IMC latency. Those are all uncore logic improvements that would influence VM performance in a positive way. Also this link points to some very direct VM improvements which you say don't exist. It's not necessarily "new virtualization technology" but it's certainly not the same as the old tech, either.

Outside of VM, there's an average of 11% difference clock-for-clock between those 7 benchmarks. Cinebench itself shows a 4.5% IPC improvement over PhI there. If the ZDNet benchmark is corrected assuming a similar 4.5% increase it still fails to match the i7 920, but your statement is still incorrect. Also the AMD 920 runs 200MHz faster than the 9950 which when combined with the 4.5% IPC improvement would probably bring that benchmark to near parity.

Still not saying the PhII can compete with an i7 and especially not a high end one, but I can't stand the spread of misinformation. If you don't care about VMs or the server environment then don't continue to act like you do. There are plenty of other benchmarks out there to base an argument on.

 

[Scali2]

Well that's simply not true and a pretty haneous generalization. I guess it depends on your definition of a "feature", but the improvements for PhII include: DDR2/DDR3 dual memory controller, increased L3 cache size, decreased L3 cache latency, decreased IMC latency. Those are all uncore logic improvements that would influence VM performance in a positive way.

And every other application.
It's not something that would specifically improve VM performance in relation to the rest.
I would argue that it won't improve the VM performance itself, but rather the guest OS/applications running within the VM, as the VM overhead/logic itself is handled in the same way as on a Phenom. You see the subtle difference?
It's pretty obvious that applications in a VM run faster if the CPU is faster. That doesn't mean the CPU is actually more efficient at running a VM.
It doesn't establish a fundamental difference between how Phenom, Phenom II and Core i7 handle virtualization, let alone that it would give any one of them a tangible advantage over the others. Which is what facebook was claiming.

Also this link points to some very direct VM improvements which you say don't exist. It's not necessarily "new virtualization technology" but it's certainly not the same as the old tech, either.

So they tweaked a few buffers here and there. It's still the same architecture. This is called marketing.
Penryn has also received some tweaks in comparison to Conroe. But the virtualization technology is still the same. In fact, even Core i7 has the same virtualization technology, pretty much.

Outside of VM, there's an average of 11% difference clock-for-clock between those 7 benchmarks. Cinebench itself shows a 4.5% IPC improvement over PhI there. If the ZDNet benchmark is corrected assuming a similar 4.5% increase it still fails to match the i7 920, but your statement is still incorrect. Also the AMD 920 runs 200MHz faster than the 9950 which when combined with the 4.5% IPC improvement would probably bring that benchmark to near parity.

Again, these are overall performance improvements, nothing related to VMs specifically.
The argument was that somehow Phenom II would have better VMWare performance than an original Phenom because of <whatever... it was never specified>. Additionally, Core i7 would have some kind of performance problem related to running VMWare.

You're only arguing that Phenom II is slightly faster than Phenom overall, and as a logical result, it will also be slightly faster in VMWare. Yes, that is pretty obvious.

Still not saying the PhII can compete with an i7 and especially not a high end one, but I can't stand the spread of misinformation. If you don't care about VMs or the server environment then don't continue to act like you do. There are plenty of other benchmarks out there to base an argument on.

The misinformation is coming from facebook, claiming that Core i7 has problems running VMWare, and somehow that Phenom II would be much better.
Because of a lack of benchmark results relating to VMWare, a comparison between Core i7 and a Phenom 9950 was the best I could google up on short notice.
Now, it is my understanding that the Phenom and Phenom II do not have significant differences in overall VM technology or features. As such, the performance of Phenom II will be within a few % of this Phenom, just like in most other applications.
facebook wants to argue differently, yet fails to substantiate any of his claims, either by showing direct benchmarks of Core i7 vs Phenom II (or Phenom vs Phenom II), or at least making it plausible that Phenom II has significantly better VM performance than Phenom and/or Core i7 by pointing out some substantial differences in the architecture.

 

[mikeblas]

But do you think AMD has a chance at keeping up, or maybe even regaining the market like they did in the socket A days?

Regaining the market? AMD never had it; at their peak, Intel was outselling them more than two-to-one.

Going forward, they don't have any IP and they don't have any manufacturing capacity. They're hemorrhaging money. It's only a matter of time before they divest more of their assets on their way down.

 

[Silent.Sin]

And every other application.
It's not something that would specifically improve VM performance in relation to the rest.
I would argue that it won't improve the VM performance itself, but rather the guest OS/applications running within the VM, as the VM overhead/logic itself is handled in the same way as on a Phenom. You see the subtle difference?
It's pretty obvious that applications in a VM run faster if the CPU is faster. That doesn't mean the CPU is actually more efficient at running a VM.
It doesn't establish a fundamental difference between how Phenom, Phenom II and Core i7 handle virtualization, let alone that it would give any one of them a tangible advantage over the others. Which is what facebook was claiming.

My own post yesterday got me wondering so I went into some deeper research. It's still very hard to find server-level i7 VM benches since the Nahelem EP has yet to appear outside of Apple . I did stumble upon this article. If you use that to compare between Barcelona/Shanghai you can pretty plainly see that there ARE differences between how a PhI and PhII handle the underlying VM management outside of GuestOS performance improvements. This may be solely due to the increased L3 cache, but that's a pretty enormous VM density increase for a relatively small total of 4x4MB cache size increase. Intel went from 0 L3 to 4x16MB shared L3 in the Dunnington and only gained 1 more tile than AMD. In my opinion there are greater enhancements at work in Shanghai.

Going back to my original argument where AMD will be countering the EP with the Istanbul for a small amount of time and extrapolating from the AT benchmark you get about 1 tile (=6 VMs) per core in a 2S Shanghai system. Istanbul would run 12 tiles on that same 2S server assuming linear scaling, coming pretty close to AMD's own 4S system which registered 14 tiles. If the 2S Intel EP system is expected to approach 4S Shanghai, then you could say the same for a 2S Istanbul as well.

There is even a very similar discussion to this one over on the AT forums, but they come to the same fuzzy conclusions. The jury is still out on how the Nahelem does in VMmark. I expect it to be a massive increase in performance, especially for the apps running inside the VM, but in terms of which platform will be "better" depends wholly on how the VMs are being used and if density is more important or if per capita performance is more important and how the two CPUs stack up there.

 

[facebook]

Phenom 940 has almost the same number of reviews at newegg now (610) compared to i7 920 (621)
Phenom 940 (released almost two months after i7 920)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

I think AMD are hot, maybe 940 selling will slow down now when 955 is out soon and also the 720 are probably selling well.

The hottest market for Intel now is probably Atom

The AMD product line seems to be strong

 

[rflcptr]

Phenom 940 has almost the same number of reviews at newegg now (610) compared to i7 920 (621)
Phenom 940 (released almost two months after i7 920)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

I think AMD are hot, maybe 940 selling will slow down now when 955 is out soon and also the 720 are probably selling well.

Fuck, not this shit again.

The hottest market for Intel now is probably Atom

Atom is not a market. Atom is a product that caters to a market: Netbooks. Intel also is doing well in pretty much every other place, as well.

The AMD product line seems to be strong

Again, based on the number of Newegg reviews?

 

[CruisD64]

Umm. I didn't read all of the posts but I'm just going to say that Intel has been in the same situation as AMD is now before. It was worse however for Intel because they were so large being beaten by a company much smaller but they got their shit together and now it's time for AMD to do the same. Current AMD chips are not bad AT ALL, but when you compare them to Intel they fall short. It happens. Same with ATI and Nvidia. ATI used to pwn Nvidia and then the other way around and now it's pretty much a draw. The same will happen with AMD and Intel. Just give it time.

In a nutshell, AMD has some smart cookies working for them and all it takes for them to pull ahead is a superior instruction set. Same goes for intel though...they may pull even further ahead in the upcoming years, but I wouldn't say AMD is even close to being out of the race!

I personally wouldn't mind a Phenom II setup! Once AM3 is mainstream, I may build one for the hell of it. I do miss the days when my Opty dominated all though!

 

[rflcptr]

Umm. I didn't read all of the posts but I'm just going to say that Intel has been in the same situation as AMD is now before. It was worse however for Intel because they were so large being beaten by a company much smaller but they got their shit together and now it's time for AMD to do the same.

Read this post, though:

Regaining the market? AMD never had it; at their peak, Intel was outselling them more than two-to-one.

Going forward, they don't have any IP and they don't have any manufacturing capacity. They're hemorrhaging money. It's only a matter of time before they divest more of their assets on their way down.

 

[Casper312]

Not another Intel vs Amd thread, I see kyle and domo with the Rofleban-knife coming.

 

[rflcptr]

Not another Intel vs Amd thread, I see kyle and domo with the Rofleban-knife coming.

The thing is, though, "AMD making a comeback" would be a result of competition with Intel.

 

[Casper312]

Yes, but the thread was asking a simple question, Do you think it will, not asking what performs better and that makes the company better.

We all know intel is the better performer and amd value is undeniable.

 

[CruisD64]

Read this post, though:

Well yeah, I mean thats because Intel are marketing giants. Hyperthreading, more gigahertz...woo...we all know what that meant!

I was simply referring to the performance crown. Even though Intel was outselling AMD 2 to 1, AMD is a much smaller company so a smaller market share still translated to a large profit and kept them very much alive.

 

[Scali2]

Umm. I didn't read all of the posts but I'm just going to say that Intel has been in the same situation as AMD is now before. It was worse however for Intel because they were so large being beaten by a company much smaller but they got their shit together and now it's time for AMD to do the same.

The difference is that Intel was ahead of AMD in many areas.
Sure they didn't have the best performing CPU on the market... but they were ahead in production technology, they had multiple architectures going at the same time (Netburst, Itanium, P6... they could combine all this technology in what would become Conroe), and they just had more resources in general (larger budget, more engineers on staff, more IP etc).
Basically the performance was the ONLY thing that Intel was lacking...
Core2 was released on the same 65 nm process that the Pentium 4s used. That 65 nm process was great, much better than AMD's. It just didn't show with the Pentium 4.

AMD currently doesn't have anything. It's not just performance they're lacking. They don't have an advantage in manufacturing either, they don't have any alternative architectures that they can borrow from... and they don't have as many resources as Intel in general.

Same with ATI and Nvidia. ATI used to pwn Nvidia and then the other way around and now it's pretty much a draw.

That's way different.
ATi and nVidia are pretty well-matched in terms of resources. Neither has a manufacturing advantage, because they both outsource production, primarily to TSMC.
It all depends on who has the better design at the time. Since GPUs have a pretty short lifecycle, it can go back and forth quickly.

CPUs evolve much slower. Both Intel and AMD are using an architecture that basically started back in 1995, and has just evolved since (with the exception of Intel's escapade with Netburst).

AMD basically has little chance simply because Intel is so much bigger. They don't call Intel Chipzilla for nothing, you know.

 

[maxius]

this topic again!?! seriously it is troll bait

 

[crackbone]

Phenom 940 has almost the same number of reviews at newegg now (610) compared to i7 920 (621)
Phenom 940 (released almost two months after i7 920)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103471

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

I think AMD are hot, maybe 940 selling will slow down now when 955 is out soon and also the 720 are probably selling well.

The hottest market for Intel now is probably Atom

The AMD product line seems to be strong

Dude, if you think that has any real tangible correlation to marketshare, I think you need to go back to class.

AMD isn't gaining share, its losing it. It's going to be losing it faster in the near term as well (Nehalem Xeons), long term? It doesn't look good.

 

[DrFreeze]

i dont really know what to answer to the poll...

i mean, im pretty sure amd is gonna develop some very nice chips, for instance the phenom 2 in its various forms has already convinced me that my next build will be a PII (dont have the budget for a nehalem). Sure i will admit that im a tiny bit of an amd fanboy (only intel stuff was a e4300 and some netbook stuff), but at the price points im looking at, amd can still achieve similar performance to intel.

I doubt we'll see amd return to the top end (like in the FX55-62 days) very soon, but they dont have to in my eyes, only the people who can justify over 250 bucks for a cpu have no amd option, 220 and under, amd currently has some quite interesting stuff going on.

the most cool thing right now for me is knowing that i can pick up a 40 euro mobo and slap in a X2 (actually planning on a x2 7750 kuma), and at will drop in a 720 x3 or 940 x4, or any am2/am3 PII to come. Sure i wont run a 940 in a 40 euro mobo for all that long, but the upgrade path is just amazing

(the 40 euro mobo by the way is the asrock n61p-s, its only am2, so only ht1.0, but with a new bios it has full am3 cpu support. Planning on getting that with a 7750BE and some cheap ddr2 for a budget rig. My current desktop is a 754 sempron 3000+)

 

[facebook]

AMD isn't gaining share, its losing it. It's going to be losing it faster in the near term as well (Nehalem Xeons), long term? It doesn't look good.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090212PD209.html

With AMD's new 45nm Phenom II processor boosting demand for the AMD platform, motherboard makers expect AMD's share of the motherboard channel market will go back up to 30% in the first half of 2009, according to industry sources.

 

[maxius]

amd will survive intel and amd will trade performance leadership it is the way the market works

 

[Scali2]

amd will survive intel and amd will trade performance leadership it is the way the market works

No it isn't. You might want to look at the history between Intel and AMD, and then I mean the WHOLE history... Most people don't seem to look further back than Pentium 4 vs K8.
Eg:
Am386DX40 vs 486DX2-66
Am486DX5-133 vs Pentium 166
K5 vs Pentium MMX
K6 vs Pentium 2/3

Those look a whole lot more like the current Phenom II vs Core i7 than 'trading performance leadership'.

 

[mikeblas]

I was simply referring to the performance crown. Even though Intel was outselling AMD 2 to 1, AMD is a much smaller company so a smaller market share still translated to a large profit and kept them very much alive.

Except that it didn't. AMD has never been as profitable as Intel, even factoring against the size of the company--dollars of profit per employee, for example. They might have better performance in some markets, and they might have chips that you (or I) personally like better than comparable offerings from other companies.

But this thread is about "will take over the market?" and "AMD trying hard to become known". They're not trying hard to become known--they just can't keep up. If Michael Dell called AMD and told them that every single Dell sold this year would have an AMD chip in it, AMD wouldn't be able to execute. They just don't have the fab or manufacturing capacity to meet the demand, they wouldn't be able to execute the contract, and they'd have to refuse the work.

Since AMD doesn't have any money, they can't invest in fabs. Since they can't invest in fabs, they can't make money. Since they can't make money ... they're in a death spiral. Worse yet, they have no IP of their own--everything goes to Intel because of the problems they had with the x86 instruction set and their chip implementations early on.

 

[sdlvx]

I think everyone here is forgetting about the recession.

I also think that people are forgetting that low end and high end processors can do almost all of the same things now. Back in the day, upgrading your modem or getting a faster processor meant being able to do things and not being able to do things.

Now, people with high end CPUs get to enjoy better video encoding, folding, and better gaming. That's about it.

The times have changed, and I think that for people to judge about what is going to happen from past experiences are missing some major key factors.

 

[mikeblas]

I think everyone here is forgetting about the recession.

What makes you believe that I've forgotten about the recession?

 

[Zero82z]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090212PD209.html

With AMD's new 45nm Phenom II processor boosting demand for the AMD platform, motherboard makers expect AMD's share of the motherboard channel market will go back up to 30% in the first half of 2009, according to industry sources.

I expect the direction of the Earth's magnetic field to flip tomorrow morning. Doesn't mean it'll actually happen. Let me know when AMD actually starts gaining on Intel. Until then, stop wasting everyone's time.

 

[hedron]

Making a comeback? I suppose you meant in the area of absolute clock for clock performance, which is not happening. In that respect AMD will fail. AMD was never much of a competitor in the sales department to Intel in anything but the enthusiast market and that was only because AMDs chips performed better with their 64 bit arch. The average idiot on the street doesn't give a shit what CPU is in their computer so long as they can access their email. They only know about brand names and Intel will always win in their mind as I don't see AMD having that "cool" factor.

From Intels perspective AMD needs to be saved. If AMD goes under the government might come in and split them up, a scenario the execs at Intel surely do not want to face. Back in the early 1980s, 1984 I believe, Microsoft bought millions of dollars of Apples stock to ensure they will have a de facto monopoly over the business market. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel did the same thing with AMD.

 

[brucedeluxe169]

From Intels perspective AMD needs to be saved. If AMD goes under the government might come in and split them up, a scenario the execs at Intel surely do not want to face. Back in the early 1980s, 1984 I believe, Microsoft bought millions of dollars of Apples stock to ensure they will have a de facto monopoly over the business market. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel did the same thing with AMD.

why would the government break up intel?????? they wouldn't be a monopoly, and even if, monopolies are NOT illegal!!!

 

[christof139]

A monopoly can be illegal if the monopoly was gained through illegal business practices, and AMD I do believe has/had Intel in Fed. court for just that reason. Haven't followed the recent happennings though.

As for AMD going under, it's possible but not likely to happen for some time, as Global Foundry (GF) has over 40% of its shares owned by AMD, and AMD plans to use another corps. Z-Ram with near 10nm width circuitry I do believe in their upcoming CPU's with on chip graphics memory (APU's) and they have already signed the contract I do believe with the corp. making the Z-RAM, and Seagate and AMD have been working on SATA3 with 6GB/sec burst speed and have already demonstrated these new HD's, and all this time IBM and AMD have also been collaborating on somethings. Global Foundry intends to make 3 types of chip silicon: 1) Bulk silicon for mainstream CPU's; 2) High K silicon for energy efficient CPU's; and 3) SOI silicon for high end/performance CPU's. AMD and GF also hope to supply other corps. with GF Bulk Silicon. AMD's submersive (water) lithography technology is/has also been used by Intel. Since NVIDIA will not allow Intel to use its SLI technology in Intel mobo chipsets, Intel has to continue to make their chipsets support ATI/AMD video cards or has to start making their own Intel video cards.

AMD is still doing OK in the server/business/workstation market because the Shanghai 4x CPU is backward compatible with older Opteron mobos (sound familiar) thus allowing consumers to quickly upgrade their older server systems by just adding new Shanghai CPU's, and then there are the 6-core Istanbul server CPU's that are to be released this year and then maybe the 8 and/or 12-cores CPU's. It is possible that AMD will quickly reach production of 32nm and then 22nm CPU's by end 2009 through 2010 for the 32nm CPU's and end 2010 and 2011 for the 22nm CPU's. Intel plans on the 32nm CPU's that are nearing relese and then to go to 25nm. Many investors and corps. in the IT compoter world know of these things, hence the soon to be building of GF's new $4.x billion Fab plant in Malta, NY. Intel is also going to build more production facilities in the USA to the tune of ~$7.x billion, and both are doing it without government/taxpayer mega $$ handouts.

It will be interesting and good for conumers that use either AMD or Intel CPU's. CHEAP prices due to the recessed world economy. So, look forward to having some compooter fun at lower and thereby(e) CHEAP prices allowing for more $$ for the consumption of good food, beverages, whatever and whatever else.

PS: Got my Asrock mobo back from RMA so now I have to get it up and see if it works and maybe use my 5400+ BE to get it going and then put in a $139.99 X3 720 from Micro Center, or maybe a $104 X3 8750 or $139 or so X4 9850 or X4 810, who knows, maybe even a $94 X4 9600 BE. Whatever, too many choices and they are befuddling me wee wittle brain again. Same for vid. cards for the new Asrock mobo,1 or 2 - 4830's, 4850's, 4870's, or use the 2 spare 4670 512MB for awhile, ????? Still haven't put my E4700 system completely together yet but it is getting there, piece by piece - have all the pieces it's just gluing themm together that can get tiring/boring/repetitive at times, especially messing with the software as you know. Best wishes, time to go fry/bake some fishes and then wash some dishes after the indoor Bar-B-Q.